The Magician

'Vengeance for what?'

'Don't you remember that you hit him once, and kicked him unmercifully? I know him well now. He could have killed you, but he hated you too much. It pleased him a thousand times more to devise this torture for you and me.'

Margaret's agitation was terrible to behold. This was the first time that she had ever spoken to a soul of all these things, and now the long restraint had burst as burst the waters of a dam. Arthur sought to calm her.

'You're ill and overwrought. You must try to compose yourself. After all, Haddo is a human being like the rest of us.'

'Yes, you always laughed at his claims. You wouldn't listen to the things he said. But I know. Oh, I can't explain it; I daresay common sense and probability are all against it, but I've seen things with my own eyes that pass all comprehension. I tell you, he has powers of the most awful kind. That first day when I was alone with him, he seemed to take me to some kind of sabbath. I don't know what it was, but I saw horrors, vile horrors, that rankled for ever after like poison in my mind; and when we went up to his house in Staffordshire, I recognized the scene; I recognized the arid rocks, and the trees, and the lie of the land. I knew I'd been there before on that fatal afternoon. Oh, you must believe me! Sometimes I think I shall go mad with the terror of it all.'

Arthur did not speak. Her words caused a ghastly suspicion to flash through his mind, and he could hardly contain himself. He thought that some dreadful shock had turned her brain. She buried her face in her hands.

'Look here,' he said, 'you must come away at once. You can't continue to live with him. You must never go back to Skene.'

'I can't leave him. We're bound together inseparably.'

'But it's monstrous. There can be nothing to keep you to him. Come back to Susie. She'll be very kind to you; she'll help you to forget all you've endured.'

'It's no use. You can do nothing for me.'

'Why not?'

'Because, notwithstanding, I love him with all my soul.'

'Margaret!'

'I hate him. He fills me with repulsion. And yet I do not know what there is in my blood that draws me to him against my will. My flesh cries out for him.'

Arthur looked away in embarrassment. He could not help a slight, instinctive movement of withdrawal.

'Do I disgust you?' she said.

He flushed slightly, but scarcely knew how to answer. He made a vague gesture of denial.

'If you only knew,' she said.

There was something so extraordinary in her tone that he gave her a quick glance of surprise. He saw that her cheeks were flaming. Her bosom was panting as though she were again on the point of breaking into a passion of tears.

'For God's sake, don't look at me!' she cried.

She turned away and hid her face. The words she uttered were in a shamed, unnatural voice.

'If you'd been at Monte Carlo, you'd have heard them say, God knows how they knew it, that it was only through me he had his luck at the tables. He's contented himself with filling my soul with vice. I have no purity in me. I'm sullied through and through. He has made me into a sink of iniquity, and I loathe myself. I cannot look at myself without a shudder of disgust.'

A cold sweat came over Arthur, and he grew more pale than ever. He realized now he was in the presence of a mystery that he could not unravel. She went on feverishly.

'The other night, at supper, I told a story, and I saw you wince with shame. It wasn't I that told it. The impulse came from him, and I knew it was vile, and yet I told it with gusto. I enjoyed the telling of it; I enjoyed the pain I gave you, and the dismay of those women. There seem to be two persons in me, and my real self, the old one that you knew and loved, is growing weaker day by day, and soon she will be dead entirely. And there will remain only the wanton soul in the virgin body.'

Arthur tried to gather his wits together. He felt it an occasion on which it was essential to hold on to the normal view of things.

'But for God's sake leave him. What you've told me gives you every ground for divorce. It's all monstrous. The man must be so mad that he ought to be put in a lunatic asylum.'

'You can do nothing for me,' she said.

'But if he doesn't love you, what does he want you for?'

'I don't know, but I'm beginning to suspect.'

She looked at Arthur steadily. She was now quite calm.

'I think he wishes to use me for a magical operation. I don't know if he's mad or not. But I think he means to try some horrible experiment, and I am needful for its success. That is my safeguard.'

'Your safeguard?'

'He won't kill me because he needs me for that. Perhaps in the process I shall regain my freedom.'

Arthur was shocked at the callousness with which she spoke. He went up to her and put his hands on her shoulders.

'Look here, you must pull yourself together, Margaret. This isn't sane. If you don't take care, your mind will give way altogether. You must come with me now. When you're out of his hands, you'll soon regain your calmness of mind. You need never see him again. If you're afraid, you shall be hidden from him, and lawyers shall arrange everything between you.'

'I daren't.'

'But I promise you that you can come to no harm. Be reasonable. We're in London now, surrounded by people on every side. How do you think he can touch you while we drive through the crowded streets? I'll take you straight to Susie. In a week you'll laugh at the idle fears you had.'

'How do you know that he is not in the room at this moment, listening to all you say?'

The question was so sudden, so unexpected, that Arthur was startled. He looked round quickly.

'You must be mad. You see that the room is empty.'

'I tell you that you don't know what powers he has. Have you ever heard those old legends with which nurses used to frighten our childhood, of men who could turn themselves into wolves, and who scoured the country at night?' She looked at him with staring eyes. 'Sometimes, when he's come in at Skene in the morning, with bloodshot eyes, exhausted with fatigue and strangely discomposed, I've imagined that he too ...' She stopped and threw back her head. 'You're right, Arthur, I think I shall go mad.'

He watched her helplessly. He did not know what to do. Margaret went on, her voice quivering with anguish.

'When we were married, I reminded him that he'd promised to take me to his mother. He would never speak of her, but I felt I must see her. And one day, suddenly, he told me to get ready for a journey, and we went a long way, to a place I did not know, and we drove into the country. We seemed to go miles and miles, and we reached at last a large house, surrounded by a high wall, and the windows were heavily barred. We were shown into a great empty room. It was dismal and cold like the waiting-room at a station. A man came in to us, a tall man, in a frock-coat and gold spectacles. He was introduced to me as Dr Taylor, and then, suddenly, I understood.'

Margaret spoke in hurried gasps, and her eyes were staring wide, as though she saw still the scene which at the time had seemed the crowning horror of her experience.

'I knew it was an asylum, and Oliver hadn't told me a word. He took us up a broad flight of stairs, through a large dormitory--oh, if you only knew what I saw there! I was so horribly frightened, I'd never been in such a place before--to a cell. And the walls and the floor were padded.'

Margaret passed her hand across her forehead to chase away the recollection of that awful sight.

'Oh, I see it still. I can never get it out of my mind.'

She remembered with a morbid vividness the vast misshapen mass which she had seen heaped strangely in one corner. There was a slight movement in it as they entered, and she perceived that it was a human being. It was a woman, dressed in shapeless brown flannel; a woman of great stature and of a revolting, excessive corpulence. She turned upon them a huge, impassive face; and its unwrinkled smoothness gave it an appearance of aborted childishness. The hair was dishevelled, grey, and scanty. But what most terrified Margaret was that she saw in this creature an appalling likeness to Oliver.